Wanderlust Adventures Continue @ Cardinia & Silvan Reservoir

Before summer ended and before university started, I went on a drive through the mountains to the beautiful Cardinia Reservoir in Emerald, then up the mountain road to Silvan Reservoir (in Silvan) , before returning to Rayner’s Orchards in Woori Yallock for a second time to buy more bags of stone fruit! An approximate of the day trip looked roughly like this:

I have a thing for reservoir parks – I find them fascinating in terms of their construction, their history, the places the water supply serves, and also because I am curious as to what the various reservoirs look like. Having added all reservoir parks to my bucket list, the ones I have visited to date include Maroondah Reservoir (which is still my favorite), Sugarloaf, Greenvale, Upper Yarra Dam ((blog posts to come), Cardinia and Silvan (today’s post).

Cardinia Reservoir

Photo | Such a tranquil sight – I love how the clouds reflect on the water surface.

This beautiful Cardinia Reservoir is located off Wellington Road – like Maroondah Highway, Wellington Road fascinates me because the road takes a 360 degree transformation from a busy road that crosses through many suburbs before turning into one that is lined with empty greenness and lush trees.

Cardinia Reservoir is a great place for a walks along the dam wall, hiking, picnics, or in my case, for taking photos from the various lookouts and vantage points! According to reviews I have read on the internet, Cardinia Reservoir is a good place to go to for Kangaroo spotting during dawn and dusk. That explains why I didn’t see any because I went during the afternoon (mind you, as I was driving into Rayner’s Orchards, a Kangaroo did jump out from the bushes onto the driveway, giving me a nasty surprise).

Photo | Lovely picnic grounds. Nothing beats an open land mass of green grass, trees, and clear blue skies!Photo | Here’s a photo of the dam wall in the background. Look how tiny the trees look compared to it 😛Photo | Like his owner, the red beast is also admiring the beautiful views from the lookout point.Photo | You can see the dam wall in the distance. You can walk along it to the picnic grounds, or if you are lazy, you can drive there using the road that snakes below the dam wall.

Lunch at Emerald

After leaving Cardinia Reservoir, we stopped by in the town of Emerald for a nice cafe style lunch at Zest Cafe Bar Restaurant located on 371 Belgrave-Gembrook Road. I had a hearty vegetarian breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast with mushrooms, spinach, tomato and feta. My mom had a chicken parma with salad (typical her haha!)

Silvan Reservoir

After a filling lunch, we made our way up to Silvan Reservoir. The GPS in my car is ever so adventurous like myself, and decided to take us onto a gravel road much to my liking (heavy sarcasm there!) Coming out of the spitting gravel and dusty road, we eventually made it to Silvan Reservoir. The park is much smaller compared to other reservoir parks and photo opportunities were limited because there was only one vantage point. Nevertheless, it was still a pretty sight.

Rayner’s Orchards

The last leg of our journey was back to Rayner’s Orchards to buy more stone fruit. Somehow, we managed to digest all 12kgs of fruit we picked a month earlier, so we were back again to buy some more. Perhaps the biggest “shock” for me was when a kangaroo jumped onto the driveway, stared at me for a good 30 seconds before bouncing off and disappearing into the aisles of fruit trees lining the orchard.

Overall, the day-trip was fun! I got to see heaps, not to mention, take a gigabytes worth of photos (or possibly more). It is funny to think that even though university has already started for 4 weeks, Easter break is just around the corner. Just when I got back into study-mode, maybe I can be a bit sneaky during the Easter Break and do a small trip just to satisfy my wanderlust before I actually do settle down and hit the books (no guarantees though :p )